After a year in Belgrade, the Italian declared for the June draft but can still choose college: “I had stopped playing, then when my mother died my father signed me up for basketball again to cheer me up”
Italy has never had a player like this. For a while the world has also noticed this and is opening its doors to him: at 18 Luigi Suigo went to Serbia, at 19 he is ready for the United States. With two roads ahead. In recent days he declared himself eligible for the NBA Draft on June 23-24. He can retire by June 13th, just over a month and a half to understand if he can enter among the first 15-20 picks, or in any case a first-round call with a development program tailor-made for him. Or, and it is not a fallback but a real alternative already now, a high-profile path in a high-level college among those he has on his doorstep, to come into contact with US basketball and present himself at the 2027 Draft for a higher choice.
The spatial potential has already begun to make inroads into reality: a unicorn of 221 centimeters, and height, as is known, cannot be taught, capable with talent and work of expressing on a single, harmonious body, the speed of his feet, the sweetness of his fingertips, an above-average understanding of the game beyond his passing ability. Not the qualities of your normal “big center”. And in fact, so that the one away from the iron does not remain his only dimension, he is working to add hardness and intensity for area battles with those who have more kilos and athleticism. “The dribbling, the shooting – he says himself what he feels he wants to work on -. But in particular I’m realizing that I have to work on the speed of my feet, at a high level I find faster opponents. And I certainly have to improve in physicality, in the ability to withstand contact more.”
WHAT A STORY
—
And to think that because of his feet he might never become a basketball player. To tell it, Suigo opens the family album, and his heart: “My dad is two meters tall: he started playing late, at 17 years old, he has the speed record for exit due to fouls! My mother was 1.80m, I lost her when I was 11 years old: at 7, due to a problem with my heels, she wanted me to stop playing for fear of getting hurt. When she died it was December, in January my dad decided to enroll me in basketball again also to cheer me up: I couldn’t believe I was starting again, it helped me not to think about what had happened.” Brilliant speaker, “SuiGoat” has a good relationship with height: “Excellent. The best joke came from a boy who stopped me once while walking: ‘What do you eat for breakfast to be so tall, bread and rulers?'”. Always a basketball fan (“From Varese. When they called me to play there it was nice”), his idols tell a lot: “The first one as a child was James Harden: he drove me crazy every time he scored step backon the pitch I tried to emulate him and so I learned to do it. Even thinking about the player I wanted to become, at 14 I wanted to become like Giannis but with more shooting. Then Wembanyama popped up! I always look to Jokic for how he moves in the low post and for the rest to Wemby and Porzingis, the player with characteristics closest to me, to study how he plays, learn, repeat.”
FUTURE
—
Jokic is a name that returns: after three years in the Olimpia youth team in which he exploded under the care of coach Michele Catalani until being called up to the first team with Ettore Messina (“He has always been very helpful, having trained with the greats helped me. Josh Nebo supported me with post movements and with some tips on the rebounding position. Pippo Ricci and all the Italians taught me a lot about details”), last summer at the end of the youth team Suigo chose Mega Belgrade, the team from which “The Joker” emerged: “This is also why it was my choice. Not only Jokic, more than a dozen went to the NBA: Bitadze, Jovic, Zubac… The other options were in Serie A or abroad, but I preferred another type of experience: more space available and in a quality league. And I wanted to get out of the comfort zone: I thought that going to another country where I don’t speak the language would help me grow as a person. And, with little time to show as much as possible, with the goal of the NBA Draft in June, it was important to know that I had a starting role and more margin for error, which I didn’t have elsewhere.”
choices
—
Why not in Italy? “Now something is moving, I see teams that are trying to get young players like Trento, my friends Niang and Hassan, to play. I believe that in the future the teams that offer these opportunities will increase. If you play two minutes a game you can’t get used to the bodies and speed of the senior world, I noticed this at the Mega: the first few games helped me get my bearings, attacked by different guards than those I found in the Under 19s.” Having already got their feet wet in the blue, with the call from coach Luca Banchi in the last two windows, the bar of objectives rises: “Finish the season in the best possible way to perhaps arrive at the Draft in a good position. In the long term… if I ever manage to get there, to be able to have a career entirely in the NBA”. We are working for you.
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED